The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott (best desktop ebook reader .TXT) 📗

through life after follies not worth catching, and, when caught, successively thrown away—a chase, pursued from the days of tottering infancy to those of old age upon his crutches. Toys and merry-makings in childhood—love and its absurdities in youth—spadille and basto in age, shall succeed each other as objects of pursuit—flowers and butterflies in spring—butterflies and thistle-down in summer—withered leaves in autumn and winter—all pursued, all caught, all flung aside.—Stand apart; your fortune is said.”

“All CAUGHT, however,” retorted the laughing fair one, who was a cousin of Miss Vere’s; “that’s something, Nancy,” she continued, turning to the timid damsel who had first approached the Dwarf; “will you ask your fortune?”

“Not for worlds,” said she, drawing back; “I have heard enough of yours.”

“Well, then,” said Miss Ilderton, offering money to the Dwarf, “I’ll pay for mine, as if it were spoken by an oracle to a princess.”

“Truth,” said the Soothsayer, “can neither be bought nor sold;” and he pushed back her proffered offering with morose disdain.

“Well, then,” said the lady, “I’ll keep my money, Mr. Elshender, to assist me in the chase I am to pursue.”

“You will need it,” replied the cynic; “without it, few pursue successfully, and fewer are themselves pursued.—Stop!” he said to Miss Vere, as her companions moved off, “With you I have more to say. You have what your companions would wish to have, or be thought to have,—beauty, wealth, station, accomplishments.”

“Forgive my following my companions, father; I am proof both to flattery and fortune-telling.”

“Stay,” continued the Dwarf, with his hand on her horse’s rein, “I am no common soothsayer, and I am no flatterer. All the advantages I have detailed, all and each of them have their corresponding evils—unsuccessful love, crossed affections, the gloom of a convent, or an odious alliance. I, who wish ill to all mankind, cannot wish more evil to you, so much is your course of life crossed by it.”

“And if it be, father, let me enjoy the readiest solace of adversity while prosperity is in my power. You are old; you are poor; your habitation is far from human aid, were you ill, or in want; your situation, in many respects, exposes you to the suspicions of the vulgar, which are too apt to break out into actions of brutality. Let me think I have mended the lot of one human being! Accept of such assistance as I have power to offer; do this for my sake, if not for your own, that when these evils arise, which you prophesy perhaps too truly, I may not have to reflect, that the hours of my happier time have been passed altogether in vain.”

The old man answered with a broken voice, and almost without addressing himself to the young lady,—

“Yes, ‘tis thus thou shouldst think—‘tis thus thou shouldst speak, if ever human speech and thought kept touch with each other! They do not—they do not—Alas! they cannot. And yet—wait here an instant—stir not till my return.” He went to his little garden, and returned with a half-blown rose. “Thou hast made me shed a tear, the first which has wet my eyelids for many a year; for that good deed receive this token of gratitude. It is but a common rose; preserve it, however, and do not part with it. Come to me in your hour of adversity. Show me that rose, or but one leaf of it, were it withered as my heart is—if it should be in my fiercest and wildest movements of rage against a hateful world, still it will recall gentler thoughts to my bosom, and perhaps afford happier prospects to thine. But no message,” he exclaimed, rising into his usual mood of misanthropy,—“no message—no go-between! Come thyself; and the heart and the doors that are shut against every other earthly being, shall open to thee and to thy sorrows. And now pass on.”

He let go the bridle-rein, and the young lady rode on, after expressing her thanks to this singular being, as well as her surprise at the extraordinary nature of his address would permit, often turning back to look at the Dwarf, who still remained at the door of his habitation, and watched her progress over the moor towards her father’s castle of Ellieslaw, until the brow of the hill hid the party from his sight.

The ladies, meantime, jested with Miss Vere on the strange interview they had just had with the far-famed wizard of the Moor. “Isabella has all the luck at home and abroad! Her hawk strikes down the black-cock; her eyes wound the gallant; no chance for her poor companions and kinswomen; even the conjuror cannot escape the force of her charms. You should, in compassion, cease to be such an engrosser, my dear Isabel, or at least set up shop, and sell off all the goods you do not mean to keep for your own use.”

“You shall have them all,” replied Miss Vere, “and the conjuror to boot, at a very easy rate.”

“No! Nancy shall have the conjuror,” said Miss Ilderton, “to supply deficiencies; she’s not quite a witch herself, you know.”

“Lord, sister,” answered the younger Miss Ilderton, “what could I do with so frightful a monster? I kept my eyes shut, after once glancing at him; and, I protest, I thought I saw him still, though I winked as close as ever I could.”

“That’s a pity,” said her sister; “ever while you live, Nancy, choose an admirer whose faults can be hid by winking at them.—Well, then, I must take him myself, I suppose, and put him into mamma’s Japan cabinet, in order to show that Scotland can produce a specimen of mortal clay moulded into a form ten thousand times uglier than the imaginations of Canton and Pekin, fertile as they are in monsters, have immortalized in porcelain.”

“There is something,” said Miss Vere, “so melancholy in the situation of this poor man, that I cannot enter into your mirth, Lucy, so readily as usual. If he has no resources, how is he to exist in this waste country, living, as he does, at such a distance from mankind? and if he has the means of securing occasional assistance, will not the very suspicion that he is possessed of them, expose him to plunder and assassination by some of our unsettled neighbours?”

“But you forget that they say he is a warlock,” said Nancy Ilderton.

“And, if his magic diabolical should fail him,” rejoined her sister, “I would have him trust to his magic natural, and thrust his enormous head, and most preternatural visage, out at his door or window, full in view of the assailants. The boldest robber that ever rode would hardly bide a second glance of him. Well, I wish I had the use of that Gorgon head of his for only one half hour.”

“For what purpose, Lucy?” said Miss Vere.

“O! I would frighten out of the castle that dark, stiff, and stately Sir Frederick Langley, that is so great a favourite with your father, and so little a favourite of yours. I protest I shall be obliged to the Wizard as long as I live, if it were only for the half hour’s relief from that man’s company which we have gained by deviating from the party to visit Elshie.”

“What would you say, then,” said Miss Vere, in a low tone, so as not to be heard by the younger